


All Due Care

by leupagus



Series: Erebor and Weeds [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Common Cold, F/M, Female Bilbo, Illnesses, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The momentous first evening that Thorin and Bilbo share a bed, although neither of them notice its momentousness. Prequel snippet to "Beneath the Ever-Bending Sky;" written before the second movie was released, so departs from canon in terms of the events of Laketown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Due Care

“I’m fine! go away!”

Thorin ignored that, because it was followed by a sneeze and some pitiful coughing. He opened the door and was rewarded by a glare from the creature bundled up on the bed. She was a sight to be seen, with a bright red nose and her hair tangled, the rest of her covered in more blankets than he'd thought existed in Esgaroth. He wanted to laugh; instead he braced his thumbs in his new belt and frowned at her.

"The others have asked after you," he said, "And you've been too ill to come down and assure them yourself."

“I’m not so ill I can’t remember what I _just said_ ,” she snapped at him, charming as ever. “And I just said ‘I’m fine.’”

“That you did,” Thorin agreed, and closed the door behind him. “As well as ‘go away.’ We’re leaving in a week; the men of Esgaroth have been generous with supplies, but we cannot delay long. I wanted to see if my burglar was going to survive until then.”

“ _Your burglar_ will be fine in another day or two,” she said, and sneezed hard enough to rattle the bed. “Drat,” she added, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders more tightly. “If she doesn’t freeze to death first.”

It had been a balmy autumn day, and the room was in truth a bit stuffy. “You’re not in danger of that, surely?”

“I can’t seem to warm up,” she admitted, looking very pathetic. “Bombur even brought some bricks heated by the kitchen fireplace because I told him my mother used to do that on cold winter nights, only I don’t think dwarves do that normally. He set fire to the bedspread a bit.” She prodded at the foot of the bed, where one blanket did look singed.

“He didn’t mention that to us.”

“I can’t think why,” Bilbo said, and sneezed. “As soon as I’m no longer made up mostly of icicles, I’ll be fine.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Thorin asked, curious. “I don’t think our hosts, hospitable as they’ve been, will allow you to build a campfire in here.”

“Especially since I’ve already been responsible for one near conflagration,” she agreed, smiling. She sneezed again. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“You use that word in such novel ways,” Thorin said, shrugging off his greatcoat and adding it to the blankets and furs already piled on top of Bilbo. “Possibly it has some meaning in your Shire that hasn’t yet passed on to the rest of the world.”

“What are you doing?” Bilbo said. She didn’t sound alarmed; she sounded like she already knew the answer.

So he sat on the side of the bed and worked on the straps of his boots. “Best thing for hypothermia is body heat from someone else,” he said, getting one boot off.

“I don’t have hypothermia, I have a cold,” she pointed out.

“Óin says you were feverish this morning, and,” he clapped his hand over her forehead, “You still are.”

She almost goes cross-eyed, glaring at the hand covering her eyebrows. “How would any of you know the normal temperature of a hobbit?” she pointed out, in between another bout of coughing. “Perhaps we’re just naturally hot-blooded creatures.”

“Perhaps,” he said, and turned to get his other boot off. He heard some shuffling behind him, and when he looked back she’d made some space for him. He lifted an eyebrow.

“I’ve been a member of this Company long enough—“ she sneezed, “—to know that you’re not going to pay attention to any objections I might offer. Besides, either Fíli or Kíli sent you up here, and if you go back downstairs they’ll just berate you for the rest of the evening.”

“Kíli,” Thorin admitted.

“Good to know tending to me rates at least higher than getting disappointed looks from your nephew,” Bilbo said.

“Just barely,” he grunted, pulling at his tunic.

“Thorin!”

He paused, arms still raised. “What?” he asked.

She was an even brighter red then she’d been a few minutes before. “Nothing,” she said, and screwed her eyes tightly shut.

He slowly lowered his arms. “You find us that hideous?”

She squinted one eye open at him, then both when she could see he was still safely covered. “It’s not that,” she said, waving her hands around. “Although truth be told, you’re all hairier than an entire pack of sheepdogs. No, it’s just that hobbits are… more…”

“Prudish?” Thorin guessed.

“ _Modest_ ,” she sniped. “You’ll notice _I’m_ still wearing clothes.”

“If they’re still damp from the barrel-ride down the river you took yesterday, you should probably shuck them off,” Thorin said, more to see if her face turned purple than out of a hope she’d actually do it.

She burrowed deeper under the blankets until all he could see of her was two glowering eyes and a tangle of curls. “I regret ever signing that confusticated contract,” she grumped.

“We all must live with our choices,” he said, and got under the covers; true enough, she was chilled, the blankets doing little to warm her, though there did not appear to be any dampness that would leach away what heat there was. “Come here,” he said, lifting his arm.

She still looked dubious. “What if you get sick?” she said.

“Dwarves don’t easily catch the diseases of men and hobbits,” he told her, gathering her closely to his side when she didn’t move. She fit well there, despite her squirming around to get comfortable. “Nor are our illnesses passed easily to others. What ails us and cures us is not what ails and cures folk like you.”

“So you’re saying that likely all that foul medicine Óin’s been pouring down my throat has done more harm than good,” she grumped, turning into him. Her ice-cold feet tucked around his; he endured it.

“More than likely,” Thorin said. He felt oddly cheerful. “I ought to have brought a book to occupy me.”

“Just go to sleep,” she offered, muffled against his shoulder. “You can’t read by the candlelight anyway, you’ll go blind.”

Thorin frowned. “You remember that dwarves spend most of our lives miles beneath the ground, don't you? We can see in pitch-blackness."

“Well then surely you can see that I’m _trying to sleep_ , and you should do the same,” she said.

“I—“ he clamped his teeth down on _cannot_ , because a half-delirious, half-asleep hobbit was probably not the best audience for a lecture on the proprieties between dwarves — and even if she was, she’d no doubt say for the seven thousandth time that she wasn’t a dwarf. “I’ll stay until you’ve gone to sleep.”

But of course this was the wrong tactic, because she lifted her head from his shoulder to stare at him. “You’ll wake me up the minute you move,” she said, sounding outraged.

“No doubt you’ll fall asleep again in good time,” he said.

“But what if I get cold again? What room is yours?”

“You are absolutely not sneaking into my rooms in the middle of the night,” Thorin said, sure of few enough things in this world but sure of _that_ , at least.

“So then you’ll stay,” she said, settling back down and slinging a proprietary arm around his chest.

“I—“

“You signed the contract too, I might remind you,” she snuffled into his chest. “‘All due care and consideration,’ I remember that bit particularly. Plus you have to defray the costs of my funeral if I die of hypothermia. Which I don’t have. But if I did.”

Thorin sighed, but offered no rebuttal. Bilbo’s breathing soon evened out, whistling slightly, and Thorin shut his eyes for just a moment, the candle’s glare bright against his eyelids. It was peaceful in this little room, in this little house floating on the lake. He shifted his arm and his hand brushed against Bilbo's tangled hair, one curl twisting around his finger. He thought idly of the patterns he might braid into her hair, beads of silver and jade and lapis lazuli flashing in sunlight, before he fell asleep.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to waldorph and screamlet, as always.
> 
> Feedback and comments are appreciated.


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